


in silent screams and wildest dreams

by nevernevergirl



Category: Runaways (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, F/M, i promise there's no character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-04
Updated: 2018-02-04
Packaged: 2019-03-13 07:19:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13565595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nevernevergirl/pseuds/nevernevergirl
Summary: In the aftermath of a confrontation with Jonah, Chase and Old Lace are missing. Gert copes. Sort of.Post-s1 finale, established Gert/Chase.





	in silent screams and wildest dreams

**Author's Note:**

> Honestly, I'm in the middle of working on my gen group post-finale fic, and I really wanted to write something with an established Gert/Chase relationship. I've also been rereading the comics, and apparently am super into taking the lines I like and pulling them into a different context? So this is complete indulgence, I'm so sorry.

It's a close call.

 

 _Everything's_ been a close call ever since they agreed to keep trying to stop Pride, but Jonah had actually shown up himself this time. They hadn’t been ready, because when were they _ever_ ready, and there had been a few terrifying moments when the ground was shaking and the building was collapsing when Gert was pretty sure this might actually be it.

 

It's not. If she can manage to get her heart to stop pounding, she might actually live to run away another day.

 

She's scrambling into the van, collapsing to the floor with Molly already wrapping herself around her before it really starts to register that something's off. Alex has the engine running and Nico's shutting the doors and _wait a fucking second_.

 

"Where's Chase?" she asks. She’s still trying to catch her breath, so her lungs ache a little as she tries to get the words out. Alex puts the van in drive, and they start to move; Molly buries her face against her shoulder. "Where's Old Lace? She's behind us, right?"

 

Karolina shuffles over and curls around her other side, her head bent so close to Gert’s that a few stands of her hair land in Gert’s mouth; Gert pushes them away and sits up a little straighter to get a better look at her. Her eyes are red and puffy already, and Gert feels like throwing up.

 

"Where are Chase and Old Lace?" she repeats, yanking her hand back. "If someone doesn't tell me where my boyfriend and my dinosaur are in the next thirty seconds—"

 

"Chase was with me," Molly says, quietly. "We were almost out of there, and then he said he thought he heard Old Lace, and when I turned around, there was too much smoke, I couldn't see him anymore."

 

"I thought I saw flames, like maybe he used the Fisitigons?" Karolina mumbles, wiping at her eyes. "But then I saw Jonah’s light, and the wall started coming down.”

 

Everything inside Gert feels like ice. She untangles herself from Molly, pushing her way to the front of the van.

 

"Alex, turn around," she snaps. "If they're still back there, we have to go get them."

 

"Gert," he says, his voice tight. He almost sounds like he's going to cry, but Gert doesn't _care._ She'll keep not caring until he turns the stupid van around. "Gert, we can't go back there. Not without getting ourselves ki—"

 

"We don't leave each other behind," she cuts him off, because if he says it, she'll start crying, and if she starts crying, she can't _fix_ this. She takes a deep breath, and climbs over the center console, reaching for the steering wheel and giving it a determined yank.

 

"What the _fuck_ ," Alex shouts; they swerve, and he scrambles to knock her hands away, pulling them back onto the road. Karolina has her arms wrapped around Gert's waist, and then Molly's yanking them both back. Gert thrashes in their arms, kicking at Alex's seat as they pull her away.

 

"We have to go _back,_ " she says, insistently, ignoring the hot tears beginning to form, because she's not going to cry. She's not going to cry, because they're going back, and everyone's going to be fine.

 

Nico crouches in front of her, grabbing both of her hands, pressing their foreheads together. She hasn’t said anything yet, and suddenly, Gert doesn’t want her to. She would give _anything_ for Nico not to say a word right now, because she’s pretty sure there’s not a single thing Nico could say that she’d want to hear.

 

“I saw Chase,” she says, her voice lower than Gert’s ever heard it. Gert chants _please stop talking please stop_ in her head, but it doesn’t work. “He got to Old Lace, and Jonah started blasting again. He was fighting, and I tried to get to him to help, but there was so much smoke, and he was yelling at me to run away—”

 

“Stop,” Gert says, out loud this time. Her stomach hurts and her head hurts and she aches all over. “Please stop talking, I don’t want to hear it, I just want to go get them, can we _please_ just go get them? God. _Please_.”

 

"We can't," Nico says, and she's crying now, too. They're all crying, and Gert suddenly can’t remember what it feels like to not be crying, for her body not to be wracked with this overwhelming awfulness. "I'm so sorry, Gert, but we can't."

  
  
  


 

When Alex got kidnapped, they went after him. When it was Karolina trapped in the church, they went after her. She knows that's not really fair, because they were a lot stupider back then, softer and less focused, giddy with new super powers and self-righteousness. They know too much now, about Jonah and the Gibborim and this plan that's been into motion since before they were born, and they’ve all grown accustomed to weighing the risks and dealing with the guilt later. She knows it’s not fair to be upset with her friends.

 

But she doesn't really have it in her to be fair right now.

 

She looks at Alex and all she can think is _someone's not coming on the rest of the mission._

 

Nico won't look directly at her, and she wonders if she's remembering _if it was you, we would_ , too.

 

It's not _fair_ —sure, they're smarter and harder now, but they're also more of a family, all of them, and she knows, logically, that she's not the only one hurting right now, but Old Lace is hers. Chase is hers. It's probably not fair to claim them so wholly, to grab all the grief for herself, but she's not feeling fair right now.

  
  
  


 

They don't go back to the Hostel for a couple of days, because they can't risk compromising the one safe haven they’ve managed to find. They take a long, convoluted route back, sleeping in the van curled up together, like they did in those first few weeks.

 

Well, the rest of them do.

 

Gert doesn't really sleep. She's pretty sure she's dozed off a couple of times, but she can't really _sleep_. She sits in the driver's seat, and she focuses on missing what they’ve lost, because Chase and Old Lace deserve that much from her. She should have fought harder. She should have tried for them. She’s thought about that day pretty much non-stop, trying to poke holes in it, trying to figure it out. Not that it matters, but she doesn’t have her meds or her boyfriend or her dinosaur, so thinks she’s allowed a few days to spiral into her own anxiety.

 

Molly’s worried; she’s quiet and clingy in the daytime. Molly’s something of _hers_ she still has, and part of her thinks maybe it’ll help if she clings to her as hard as she can. But the part of her that stays awake at night _can’t_.

 

And the thing is, she hasn’t lost everything, and Molly’s not all she has left—she _knows_ that. She has four people who can hold her hand or curl around her when she’s scared, and in any other situation, that would be enough, they'd be _enough_ , but they're broken. They can't be enough for each other when they're broken.

  
  
  


 

She’s relieved when they get back to the Hostel; if she’s not going to sleep, she’d rather do it in her own bed.

 

When she gets to her room, she feels sick.

 

Chase left his stupid fucking boxers on the floor; they’re lying next to the blankets they threw together into a makeshift bed for Old Lace. He always leaves his stupid fucking boxers on the floor, because he's 17 and he's terrible, and they're right there where he left them the last morning they were whole. And now she's crying again, trying to muffle her sobs against her arm because she doesn't want to explain to anyone who might hear her that she's crying because Chase left his stupid fucking boxers on the floor.

  
  
  


 

Gert can't sleep that night, but she's come to expect that.

 

The Hostel's quiet; everyone else went to bed hours ago, and if anyone can hear her up and moving around, they have enough sense to stay in their room. She still loves them, of course she does. She still needs them to keep what's left of her world spinning. But right now they're still broken and the jagged edges are suffocating her.

 

She needs the dark and quiet to learn how to breathe again.

 

Since she’s not sleeping anyway, she makes black tea in Karolina’s favorite chipped floral mug and dumps more sugar into it than she usually feels okay about taking. She settles on their threadbare couch while she waits for her tea to cool enough to drink.

 

Outside, something's moving. Something loud. She stiffens, setting her mug down.

 

It could be a deer or something. It's probably is a deer. They're in the middle of nowhere, it could totally be a deer.

 

Or it's something _else_ , coming to rip away what she still has left. That’s the kind of luck they usually have. She gets up, reaching for the baseball bat they keep under the couch for this kind of situation. She's not exactly coordinated enough for hand-to-hand combat, but she doesn't have a superpower anymore, no prehistoric soulmate to have her back. So. She'll have to make do.

 

She's almost to the door when it swings open; her stomach swoops and she swings the bat, kicks out a leg blindly. Her swing misses completely, but her kick connects with a shin.

 

" _Ow,_ what the _fuck_!"

 

She drops the bat; the hardwood in the Hostel's started to go soft and a little rotten, so it lands with a softer thump than it should have. If she's really seeing what she thinks she's seeing, she sort of selfishly hopes it wasn't enough to wake anyone up.

 

"Chase?" Her voice doesn't really sound like her own; she thinks she might be crying already.

 

He nudges the door shut with his shoulder, leaning down to rub at his shin. "Hey, Gert," he mumbles, grimacing. "Hell of a welcome back."

 

She makes a noise that’s half-laugh, half-sob, and then she's moving toward him, closing the space between them and getting her arms around him as quickly and as tightly as she can.

 

"What the fuck," she whispers, her face pressed against his neck. He's holding her as tightly as she's holding him, and his stupid big hands are running circles over her back. "I thought you were dead. You _asshole_."

 

"I went to get your stupid dinosaur," he mumbles, his voice muffled a little against the top of her head. He sounds so _good_ , and she's glad she was already crying, because that would be such a _stupid_ thing to start crying over. "And I did, by the way."

 

She pulls back just enough to look at him, grinning so widely her jaw sort of hurts. "She's here?"

 

"Yeah, she's outside hunting. Or possibly finding a tree to shit on? I don’t know, it’s late, and I don’t speak dino as well as you do.”

 

Gert laughs, and also keeps crying. She feels impossibly light and whole. Having Chase here, probably a little bruised but ultimately whole, is so _good_. Getting them both, having her world set back on its axis?

 

Well. That’s a motherfucking miracle.

 

"God. What the fuck. I thought you were dead," she repeats. "Both of you."

 

“I think we almost were,” he mumbles. “I think she got confused with all the smoke and the noise and couldn’t sense you. It was like she was trapped, so I was trying to get her to calm down enough to follow me out. Then Jonah went off again, and I tried to fight back—”

 

“Nico told me,” she says, quietly. She curls her fingers into the fabric of his shirt and breathes deep against his skin; he _super_ needs a shower, but that just sort of makes him feel more real.

 

“Yeah, I heard her yelling. But then the wall went down, and I think I might have been knocked out for a second?” He nuzzles against her hair a little; she can feel his breath against her hair. “I don’t know, I just remember Lace dragging me out, and we’d lost the rest of you guys. We weren’t sure if you’d come back here right away, and it took her awhile to pick up your trail, that’s why it took us so long.”

 

Gert nods a little. Chase has started absently playing with her hair, and she focuses on the soft tug, letting it ground her.

 

"I wanted to go back for you,” she mumbles. “I think everyone else wanted to, too, but they told me we couldn’t.”

 

"They were right," he says, his voice low. "You know they were right."

 

She shakes her head. "I haven't been sleeping," she says. Her voice sounds so _small_. "I can't sleep without you there."

 

He's crying now, too; she can feel it. She wants to stay in this moment forever and memorize how it feels _exactly_ : his stupid gigantic arms holding her tightly, and his stupid too-warm skin, and his dumb, stupid, terrible tears.

 

"I know, baby," he mumbles. "Let's go to bed, okay? I'm really fucking tired. Old Lace'll let herself in."

 

She nods a little, because she will, she always does. She'll let herself in and curl up beside their bed, where Gert will be sleeping, finally, next to Chase. In the morning, he'll still be there, and they'll let their family know they're whole again.

 

But right now, she's going to sleep with this stupid brave idiot beside her, like the luckiest fucking girl in the world.

 

“Hey,” she says, pulling back and really looking at him. He looks the same as he did a few days ago, except a little more tired. She lets go of his shirt and find his hands instead, lacing their fingers together. “I love you.”

 

She’s been thinking about it, a lot. Before all of this, she worried about how the words would sound, and how his face would look. After, she had fixated on how she’d never know how the words would sound and how his face would look.

 

They sound pretty good. He’s grinning like his face might break, like he never wants to stop.

 

“I know,” he says, quietly. “I love you too.”

**Author's Note:**

> find me [on tumblr](http://yorkesteins.tumblr.com/) being runaways garbage.


End file.
